Hallowed Circle (2 page)

“I know,” I said. Lydia didn’t know the half of it. Vivian had done wrong by the coven, but that was only a minor part of her no-goodness. Vivian not only set me up and used me in attempt to gain an Elders Council seat, but she had murdered Lorrie and been responsible for the near-death of Theo, another friend of mine. That’s why I’d turned her over to the vampire.

Truthfully, it wasn’t like I could have kept him from taking her, so “I turned her over to the vampire” may be overstating my role in the situation.

My part of it aside, the vampire had taken her and she hadn’t been seen since. Now, Hallowe’en was coming and there was no high priestess to conduct the all-important annual Witches Ball. It was the single biggest fund-raiser of the year for the coven and its largest publicity opportunity. Having a stand-in or temporary priestess just wouldn’t suffice—or so Lydia claimed the Elders had said.

“I wonder what happened to her,” Lydia mused.

“I think she disappeared after she dropped Beverley here. Maybe the role of godparent was too much for her.” That was the angle the media had taken. Any story that left me out of the loop was a good one and I was sticking to it.

“Will you adopt her, Persephone?”

“Sure, if she wants, but I think we’ll just keep me as the legal guardian. She needs to settle in and just be a kid.”

“See, dear, you’re such a responsible soul!
You
should
be the one to lead the coven, not a stranger to the area. You know Clevelanders are slow to warm up to outsiders, and I don’t want another fast-talking swindler misusing the privilege.”

Vivian had carried a vampire’s mark—I call it a “stain”—and that should have prevented her from attaining any authority in the first place. Under the influence of a vampire
and
in authority over witches?
Totally
bad idea. Vivian had pulled it off only because of a magical stake she created to keep her vampire master at bay. Now, due to her involving unsuspecting but responsible little ol’ me in her plot, the stake was destroyed, she was with the vampire, and I, too, carried a nefarious stain.

Ethically, I didn’t deserve being high priestess any more than Vivian had, but that wasn’t something I wanted to advertise. “Lydia, honestly, I don’t want the authority.” Not the whole truth, but not a lie either.

“That’s exactly why your name’s in. They asked me to nominate someone local from the coven to take over and I gave them your name—”

“But I’m a solitary! I may be local, but I’m not really part of the coven! I never even attended the esbats, let alone the sabbats or—”

“You’re still the best person for the job, Persephone Alcmedi, and if you want out, you’ll have to come to the Covenstead and formally decline it. Good day.”

The phone went dead in my hand.

So … if she didn’t get her way, dear old granny-witch was going to be difficult.

It’s always the sweet ones you have to watch out for.

I’d been to the Covenstead only once, almost a decade ago when I officially signed the adult roster and designated myself as a solitary—a witch who practices solo with no coven affiliation, but who still can vote on matters affecting the witch community. Back then, the building, situated on four semirural suburban acres, was little more than a concrete-block cube with garage doors on four sides that could be opened to let nature in while keeping the rain out. Now, a surprisingly attractive circular building topped with a geodesic dome was centered on the manicured lot. Stone walls rose from subtle “natural” landscaping that surrounded the dome; a wide paved parking area ringed the grounds. The rest of the terrain was as meticulously perfect as a golf course with large elder, ash, oak, and thorn trees in each corner. The acreage could easily accommodate outdoor rituals and the indoor facility offered the coven comfortable shelter during cold northeast Ohio winters. All in all, it seemed the perfect blending of witchcraft symbolism—nature, the circle, the triangle—enhanced for the comfort of those who could afford it.

Vivian had left her legacy by exploiting the deep pockets of her preferred flock. They bankrolled the bulldozer-demise of the old structure and funded the construction of the modern gymnasium-sized facility to replace it.

As I drove around it, the repeating triangle shapes of the dome reminded me of the Earth’s global geodesic lines, the ley lines. One ran across the back of my rural twenty acres and its energy fueled my house wards as needed.

I parked my Toyota Avalon—I loved all things Arthurian and chose the model for its evocative name, not its style or gas mileage. Cool early evening air swirled around me as I opened the door and got out. Rain was expected later tonight. It was my plan to get home and cut some corn stalks for decorations before it started falling.

The Covenstead had four pairs of oversize wooden doors—each placed to coincide with a compass point. The giant E carved into the middle of the pair of doors in front of me confirmed I was approaching the eastern entrance, as if the darkening evening sky behind me wasn’t clue enough. Over the entry was a wooden plaque elaborately carved with a leafy “Green Man” face and the inscription: “Merry Meet and Merry Part.”

Despite its weight, the door opened inward easily with a push.

Inside, it was nearly pitch black. Overhead, dim pinpoint lights twinkled like stars in the heavens and illuminated the points of a pentacle inlaid in the floor. Made with the deep, reddish tones of cherrywood, the symbol was centered on an otherwise pale pine floor. The floor
ing where I stood just inside the door and that of the area surrounding the wooden circle was of a durable exposed aggregate, a pebbly mix of earthy shades. The room seemed so vast it felt like an empty sports arena, thrumming with potent silence.

Hello?
The ley line whispered timidly to my senses, as if it were hiding far away.

The ley line on my property had spoken to me once, the first time I walked in the rows of corn behind my home. Since then, it always sent a barely noticeable pulse in greeting when I ventured into the cornfield, like a neighbor waving from across the street. Those who weren’t sensitive to magical energy simply didn’t feel it. They wouldn’t hear it calling either. Those who were sensitive to it usually felt it as an indication of something bad, the sort of feeling most folks described as “this place gives me the creeps.”

“Hello,” I whispered back.

The smell of ylang-ylang filled my nostrils and I could sense remnants of energy. As I stepped farther in, eyes adjusting to the dimness, my every footstep seemed amplified.

I became aware of sound to my left.

Several stairways led up to a railed catwalk encircling the structure about ten feet above the floor level. How convenient: a well-placed media area where cameras could get a good view of rituals below. My, my, Vivian and her crowd had thought of everything, hadn’t they?

But the sound I heard came from below. Wide descending stairs between the eastern door I’d entered and the southern door to my left leaked light and what was
now discernable as chattering people and a ringing phone. I started down.

“Venefica Covenstead.” Pause. “Yes, we received your fax.”

At the bottom of the stairs were arrows, universal restroom signs, and the glass wall of an office area, its door propped open. Inside, a bleached blonde sitting at a desk rolled her thick-lined eyes as she held her pen poised above a pad of paper. She seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Another woman stood leaning on an elbow-high counter and a pair of women sat on cushioned seats along the wall flipping through
New Witch
and
Green Egg
magazines.

“Okay,” the receptionist said. “I’ll make a note of that in your file, Ms. Taylor. … you’re staying at the Motel 6 near the airport. Sure, we’ll contact you there.”

The woman waiting at the counter sniggered at the words “Motel 6” and turned to me. She looked me up and down, taking in my hiking boots, jeans, black tee, and dark flannel shirt in a quick assessment. “Getting the grounds ready for the winter?”

“The grounds?”

She flapped a hand in the air. “Here. The Covenstead grounds.” She sounded annoyed with me, as if I weren’t keeping up.

She thought I was the groundskeeper? I said, flatly, “No.”

“Don’t tell me you’re here to sign in for the Eximium?” She crossed her arms, made a second up and down evaluation of me, and laughed.

Okay, so I had been outside preparing to cut fodder
shocks when roughhousing with Beverley and Ares, our black Great Dane, took precedence. Then Nana had yelled there was a call for me. After taking Lydia’s call I came straight here. I wasn’t expecting a dress code. “And if I am?”

“Are you?” she asked curtly.

She was tan, tall, and rail thin. Her glossy blue-black hair was straight and down to her elbows. Her expertly applied makeup was done in natural colors, except for fire-engine-red lipstick. The expensive white blouse was crisp; the flipped-up cuffs gave it a nonchalant flair. Her dark designer jeans were tight and pressed so they had a razor-sharp line down the front; the bottoms were folded up in wide cuffs to show thin ankles—a dainty gold chain around one—and pumps that matched her lipstick.

Lydia’s earlier comment came back to me, the one about WEC wanting “savvy, smart, and pretty young women” as covenheads for good media exposure. But only someone wearing her ultra-stylishness as a mask would bother to iron jeans like that
.

I stuck with my short answers. “Yes.”

“And are you staying at the Motel 6 too?” she asked with an utterly insincere smile.

“No.”

“Good. I hope you procured more prestigious accommodations. A high priestess does have to have some pride, you know. I’m at the Renaissance downtown. You?”

She was really bugging me. “At my home, actually.”

“Oh.” She drew out the word and her blue eyes narrowed. “You’re the local nominee. How nice.” She put out her right hand. “I’m Hunter. Hunter Hopewell.”

Everyone in the room looked up when Hunter put her hand out to me. I knew something was about to happen.

Witches, especially pushy aggressive witches, do this . . . thing. It’s similar to the guy-code, machismo, pissing-contest-in-a-handshake, where the strength of the grip proves who’s the manlier. In the witch version, since the right hand is projective, she was going to zap me with her aural energy to see if my own was weaker or stronger. Though I know about this, I don’t have cause or desire to practice it, so I hesitated, considering.

I thought of a conductivity demonstration back in high school. The whole class linked hands and on one end, someone touched the experiment’s low-voltage electricity source. On the other end, someone touched the metal chalk tray. Everyone got shocked. In my class, I was the one to touch the metal. Knowing what was about to happen made that assignment fun at the time. Like most teens, I had enough of a juvenile sadistic streak to enjoy seeing certain classmates get a low dose of electricity.

Calling up that sadistic inner teenager, I threw a jolt of my own into my palm, reached out, and grabbed Hunter’s hand with that same amount of high school glee.

Nothing happened.

She squinted again. The corner of my mouth crooked up. The nothing that happened meant we were even. Or, at least, that my new stain nullified her jolt.

The phone buzzed and the receptionist answered with, “Yes?”

“I didn’t catch your name,” Hunter Hopewell said, releasing my hand.

“I didn’t drop it.”

The receptionist placed the receiver in its cradle and turned her seat toward us. “Lydia will see you now.”

Hunter moved to go around the desk.

“Oh, not you, Ms. Hopewell. I meant Ms. Alcmedi.”

That the girl knew my name and pronounced it correctly surprised me. I thanked her and then it hit me where I knew her from. “Mandy, right? From Vivian’s coffee shop in Cleveland?”

A sheepish smile flashed across her round face and disappeared.

“You changed your hair.” It had been an indistinct pale brown.

She petted the unhealthy length of platinum blond hair stretching over her shoulder. “Yeah. Vivian’s idea.”

I wondered if Vivian helped her make any other bad choices. Poor girl. A compliment should’ve sprung to mind, but it just didn’t. The overprocessed frizz she was stuck with couldn’t flatter anyone and I couldn’t just
lie
.

She appeared as if she might cry. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I just miss her so much.”

“Oh.” What was I supposed to say? If I tried to console Mandy after I’d helped the vampire get Vivian, the words would taste ashy.

“I’ve been Vivian’s intern-slash-protégé for almost two years. You’d think that, of all people, she’d give me a hint before she split.” She rolled her eyes again even as she wiped at the corners.
At least someone had thought well of Vivian.
“I didn’t think you’d remember me,” she said.

I did. The coffee she’d made me had been terrible. Of course that had been the day I found out about Lorrie’s
murder, so maybe it was my mood souring my palate more than the beverage. Shrugging, I said, “I didn’t at first. The new color threw me. I’m surprised you knew me.”